Mekong Delta

I was unable to catch the last chopper out of Saigon, so I opted for a boat ride up Mekong River into Cambodia. My last days in Vietnam along the Mekong Delta were two of the most relaxing days, next to Halong Bay, I spent in the whole country. I desperately needed to get out of the cities. The masked marauding bandits with lamp shades for helmets that clogged up the streets with their scooters and ceasless horns were driving me nutz.

My tour bus left Saigon about 7:30am from the Sinh Cafe. I was still tired from the night before hanging out with the Italians at the disco tech.

The bus drove about two hours south through the flat lands of never ending rice fields to the town of Mytho where all the passengers boarded small ferry boats and putted through rivery streets watching merchants moving goods of all kinds. Mainly fruits, rice, and even sand from the river bed.




Inside one of the boats

The boat did a big loop around the canals so all us tourist could get a look and then started up a small channel with several huts along the riverside.


Mytho

We stopped for lunch somewhere around Vinh Long at a small pavilion with tables set up around what looked very similar to a Japanese garden. Two musicians started playing traditional instruments that looked like guitars with a female singing in Vietnamese, it reminded me of Japanese Inca, as everyone was finishing their lunch.

We started back up the channel for a couple more hours before pulling into a dock and boarding the bus again to take us to Chau Doc near the Cambodian border.


Going up river

Everyone checked into a hotel provided by the touring company and then went down the street to restaurant. I was a little late, so I sat by myself and ordered grilled shrimp and rice. I got a small portion of rice and two shrimp, shells, heads, tails, legs and all, straight off the grill.

The next morning I woke up at 6:30am and had an omelet and baguette in the hotel lobby. We boarded our bus that drove us about two blocks to the river, where we boarded narrow row boats with expert drivers and paddled through to the small Cham Village.


Japanese guys in my boat


Heading towards the Cham Village

The entire village was floating on the river in small bamboo and wooden huts. We weaved around the huts and saw various fish hatcheries until we arrived at a small dock. We got off the row boats and walked through part of the village located on the banks of the river.


Floating village


One of the boat drivers

It turned out the entire village were Muslims the specialize in weaving sarongs and scarves. We had a brief visit to one of their mosques and walked around the roof of the building.


Cham Village Mosque

Then we walked back to the row boats that took some people further up the river, but dropped myself and a few others heading into Cambodia off next to a small ferry with lawn chairs set up for us passengers.


Saying goodbye to the rowboats

I sat in the very front and could stretch my legs and listen to music with my discman in total comfort as the rice fields and the muddy Mekong River went sliding by. I was not equipped with a Doors soundtrack, but I was armed with Dr. Johns' Zu Zu Man and a more modern Jay-Z's Black Album.


Scene from the boat

The boat trolled along for a couple hours before arriving at the border crossing. We were herded off the boat with our bags on our backs and paraded into a small building where our bags were scanned with an x-ray machine. I don't think the official was even looking at his monitor. Then we handed our passports to the tour guide while we were being taken to a restaurant for lunch. I suppose the guide took them to get stamped while we ate tasteless portions of fried vegetables and rice, but I have no idea where he went.

After lunch everyone got their stamped passports back, and we walked about 200m up the river and boarded a different ferry boat, this one was big, long and yellow. It took us up the river a few minutes to the Cambodian entry point.

As soon as I stepped off the boat and into the immigration officials office the atmosphere changed. Everything became much lighter all of a sudden.


Cambodian border crossing

We got back on the boat and went a couple more hours up river, just watching farm land and more rice drift by with all the debris floating down the Mekong. A Shrek looking guy sitting in front of me had very pungent body odor and kept finding reasons to lift his arms and burn my nose hair.

Eventually we stopped at the side and boarded a bus drove us down a bumpy, gravelly road running next to the Mekong River and into Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital (Col. Kurtz country).